Drum finishes with:
I think it's safe to say that Republicans have exactly zero intention of replacing Obamacare with anything at all except a few miscellaneous gifts to their campaign contributors (state-level regulation for insurance companies, tort reform for the Chamber of Commerce, etc.). The 30 million uninsured will be quickly and completely forgotten, as McConnell's robotic dedication to GOP talking points showed. How about if we all stop pretending that they were ever serious about this in the first place?...which is right. To put it a different way: Democrats are in favor of this plan to allow universal access to health insurance and health care. Republicans, on the other hand, are not just against this bill, they are really opposed to universal access to health care. After all, the reforms they suggest (tort reform, increased competition, making costs more directly felt by consumers) are all decent ideas that would help the system become more efficient, but none of them would solve the barriers to universal access- insurance companies denying coverage to high-risk people, and the fact that insurance is too expensive in the individual market.
I think it actually is complicated. I imagine that republicans would be happy to have universal coverage (i.e. everyone with privately purchased health insurance). After all, they certainly aren't happy with footing the bill for the uninsured (or wouldn't be if they thought about it). The problem is that they don't want to do anything that would bring this about.
ReplyDeleteThis seems an even stronger sign that they've (collectively) gone off the deep end. They have an end they probably want (universal coverage - even though possibly for different reasons than liberals would want the same end), but they can't think of any way to reach it that doesn't conflict with one of these ever more restrictive rules they've formed (nothing that Obama supports, nothing that involves raising taxes, nothing that would allow one to say that the government is actually doing something useful, ...)
I think that's another way of saying the same thing I said in my post. It's fine to say you're for universal coverage, but if you're unwilling to do any of the things required to make it happen, then really you're not for it.
DeleteI guess I could say I'm for lower taxes, because hey, it would be great to pay lower taxes. But since I don't want to cut spending significantly and I don't want to increase the deficit even more, it's not really fair for me to say I'm for lower taxes. Similarly, Republicans like the idea of everyone having access to health care, but since everything else is a higher priority, they can't really lay claim to being in favor of it.